1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an integrated circuit device, preferably a capacitor, and a method of making the same, and, more particularly, an integrated circuit capacitor for mixed signal applications that is made using chemical mechanical polishing.
2. Background Information
Capacitors are necessary for many analog and digital integrated circuit applications. Further, certain applications require series parallel combinations of integrated circuit capacitors. One such application is mixed signal applications, in which switched and capacitor filter, analog-to-digital or digital-to-analog converters, charge distribution networks or analog or sampled data functions are performed on an integrated circuit chip.
While there are many known techniques for forming integrated circuit capacitors, such techniques are characterized by the use of plural numbers of mask steps. Such mask steps inherently create undesired alignment variables such that the fabrication of integrated circuit chips containing integrated circuit capacitors is very difficult as well as increase product cost. Further, fabrication of integrated circuit capacitors using known methods also tends to result in other undesired characteristics, such as surface topologies having peaks and valleys which make the proper formation of subsequent layers difficult. For example, the formation of a subsequent metal patterning layer over a surface having peaks and valleys tends to cause inconsistencies in the individual conductive paths that are part of the metal patterning layer. Further, formation of conventional capacitors tends to adversely impact on thermal considerations, especially for devices operating in the deep submicron region. While methods are known to overcome certain of these undesired characteristics, such as the topology problem noted above, such conventional methods tend to be overly complicated and, as a result, difficult to practically implement and/or undesireably expensive to implement.
Further, other circuit devices having formation characteristics similar to that of integrated circuit capacitors also suffer from many of the same fabrication problems.